Classic Car Market Stats: August 2020

After the flurry of activity in July sales, August 2020 was disappointing. With what is traditionally known as Monterey Car Week limited to online sales, the big blockbuster cars were nowhere to be found. To put things into perspective, the top 10 sales in August 2020 represented $22.9m in Dollar Volume, while the top 10 in 2019 brought in $78.6m. Overall, the market was down 62% from $306.6m in 2019 to $116.8m in 2020. 

Classic Car Market Stats: August 2020

On the bright side, the big auction houses did a great job adapting quickly to an online world and still managed multi-million dollars sales. In fact, because of this experience, we expect future sales to “normalize” throughout the years ahead instead of the usual big bumps in January (Scottsdale) and August (Monterey). Online, year-round sales are looking like the “new normal”. We’ll see! 

Note: Stats quoted in this email are as of August 31, 2020 @ 7pm eastern.


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Top Sales

RM Sotheby’s Shift/Monterey and Gooding Geared Online presented several incredible vehicles taking most of the top 10 sales. Our favorite was this 1959 Porsche 718 RSK Spyder sold by Bonhams for $2,232,500 – a model which served as the inspiration for the more contemporary Porsche 718 Boxster and Cayman models. 

View Top 10 Sales >

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Flips & Flops

There was a lot of flipping this month! The top flip goes to this 1955/6 Aston Martin DB2/4 MKII which appears to have sold for a $90,000 profit in 7 months. Not bad for a pandemic! On the flops side, someone took a bath on this 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 SC Coupe. Hey, you win some, you lose some! 

View Top Flips & Flops >

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Your new favorite app

You can now get your updates from CLASSIC.COM on the go with our new iPhone app! See your market updates and saved vehicles in a new “Timeline” view, and scroll to your heart’s content while waiting for your kid’s Zoom class to end. 

Download the iPhone App >


Chart of the month: Locations

Have you ever wondered what is the best location to sell a 1st generation Bronco? Or any classic for that matter? On CLASSIC.COM you can now see the data. Go on to your Markets and click on the “Locations” chart. 


New Markets

Want to track sales of your favorite make/model? You can follow your favorite markets and we’ll keep you up to date with alerts on new listings and sale prices. Here are some of our favorite markets launched this month:

Search all markets here

If there’s a market you’d like us to add, please let us know in the comments… we are adding markets every day!


* These reports include sales reported in US Dollars only. Sales reported in other currencies are not taken into account… yet.


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